Thursday was a slow news day in the Rift world. Not really a lot happening at the moment. I am hoping that this is the calm before the storm, with the storm being the beta announcement! But, until then, we Rift fans need to find something to occupy our time and what better way to do that than the official forums. For that purpose, I give you the Rift Forum Report! The RFR is something I intend to feature every Friday on an ongoing basis. The RFR is a collection of my favorite forum topics on the official Rift forums.

These may be the most interesting posts, the most controversial or, simply the most humorous. If it catches my attention, it will go here, along with my thoughts on the topic at hand. So, without further ado, I give you the first installment of the Rift Forum Report!

I know the game is still early and a lot can change when it’s released but as of now it seems that there will be no cross faction communication. I was never a huge fan of factions in any MMO. I always liked the idea of any race grouping with each other. I’ve played many MMO’s with race/faction restrictions. I can understand the reason behind factions is mainly due to PvP but not being able to communicate with each other in my opinion takes away the fun in PvP encounters. Also talking a little smack after destroying your enemy for giggle is fun. I may be the only one who is opposed to cross faction communication but I can’t see why not ad it.

This has probably been one of the most talked about threads on the forums at the moment. Right now its up nineteen pages and counting, with no signs of slowing down. I must admit I started out firmly against cross-faction communication of any type. Being a PvP’er the opposite faction is there for one reason and one reason only; to kill. However, after reading through the thread I have started to come around a bit. Though I am still against cross-faction communication in trade, general or world chat, I think enabling it in /say or /yell would not be a bad idea. The thread has also taken a turn to include cross-faction grouping and that is one thing I am firmly against, at least on PvP servers. The problems it would cause would not be worth the small benefit I see in it.

So for this one, count me in on limited cross-faction communication but completely out on cross-faction grouping. Go take a look at the thread and add your two cents!

A: Oh yes! World PvP will be encouraged because invasions and rifts will be tagging players for PvP. So we’ll for sure have some world PvP.

This is from a new interview posted on curse.com has me a bit concerned. For the first time being a PvE player I was looking forward to open world PvP but this seems like forced PvP on a PvE server. If someone has some clarification on this for PvE servers would really appreciate it. I want to be able to choose when I PvP not everytime a rift or invasion opens that has to be taken care that is taking away my choice imo.

If there is one thread that was more popular than the communication one, it was this one. The thread is already at 23 pages and keeps going, despite assurances from various developers that should end the argument. Truthfully, I am completely at a loss why this one is still going. Two developers, Adam Gershowitz and Scott Hartsman, have both chimed to sit PvE’ers at ease but to no avail. The debate rages on.

The thread really illustrates the vast differences between the PvE’ers and the PvP’ers and one can barely understand the others point of view. As far as I am concerned, I hope the PvE’ers get a server where they can PvE to their hearts desire and never, ever have to fight another player. Luckily, that sounds like exactly what they are going to be able to do.

Thoughts on this? I know there were a lot of beta keys given out at launch, and it makes me mad that people would go and sell them. But why should it bother me? At least they’re offering it to people who really want them. There are like 10 keys on ebay now and i’m honestly thinking about buying a bag one to increase my chances.

Conflicted.

I see this every time a new game gets close to beta. There will always be people willing to sell beta keys or beta accounts. Yes, it sucks. No, you can’t really do much about it. Warhammer Online had a nice little side industry going during its beta and I saw beta accounts for sale all over the place. The funny thing about this one is that these keys are not guaranteed invites. These are chances to get into beta. So, I guess if you want to spend your hard-earned money on a small chance to get into beta, more power to you.

In looking over The Official Beta Selection Thread I saw a bunch of applications with a post count of one. I got curious about how many one post apps there are so I wrote some code to go through and break out the number of beta applications by post count and forum join date. No real point to be made here, I just thought someone else might find this data interesting.

Now this is an interesting thread. Ware went through and gathered data on the entire beta selection thread. No small feat, considering the thread is up to a colossal 174 pages. Gotta admire Ware’s persistence! The thread continues with an argument about whether post count should help decide if someone gets a beta slot or not and Trion’s methods of deciding on testers. For what its worth, I do not think pure post count should decide participation, rather it should be decided by contribution to the community. If you contribute positively to the community in your posts and post in a clear, concise, non-confrontational manner then your posts should count for more than someone who just has 300 posts of non-sense.

Not sure how many of you played World of Warcraft before The Burning Crusades but for those of you who did and were on a PvP server, this may hit home for you:

We need our Blackrock Mountain!

You see, in the days before TBC, Blackrock Mountain was the be-all, end-all of World PvP in WoW. Blackrock was a large mountain, that just so happened to contain five of the biggest, most important end-game instances in the game. Blackrock Depths, Upper and Lower Blackrock Spire, Molten Core and Blackwing Lair were all contained within. This, of course, meant it was a hotspot that everyone went to at endgame.

Because of this, BRM was a highly populated PvP war at nearly all hours of the day. Guilds fought to get in and they fought to get out. Running through Blackrock was akin to running a gauntlet and there were fights everywhere. Some guild just went into BRM to keep other groups from getting in and this, in turn, caused guild to group up to defeat the original guild.

It was easily among my best times in WoW and nearly as fun as some of the keep sieges I had in DAoC. Funny thing, there was no PvP objectives inside. It was just a place people went to have fun. Here is a quote from Wow-Wiki:

Some called this the gauntlet…
everyone from 50-somethings to the fully geared raider frequented this warzone cleverly disguised as a mountain. Some in hopes of acquiring powerful epic item, others to ensure that didn’t happen.
There were more dangers lurking around every corner in this mountain than to possibly list. Even the most experienced raider couldn’t anticipate rogues hidden in these corridors, or the priest hiding in the shadows helplessly tossing mind-controlled opponents into the fiery lava pits below.
As with most Pre-TBC content, the objectives and rewards found in this mountain have been trivialized to the extent that there is no motivation for players to come here. Blackrock Mountain may only be remembered for what it was, the destination for end game PvE and high-stakes PvP.

Ok, I am obviously a bit biased about this post, because I started it, but it generated some good conversation and some nice memories for us old time WoW players. I feel very strongly about this and I would love to see something similar in Rifts. Simply put, it is great content with no downsides. On PvE servers it is nice because there are many instances in a small area, making it easy to run a lot of instances without a lot of travel time. For PvP’ers it will be a hot-spot of intense PvP combat. And for the developers it will be ready-made PvP content, without having to worry about battlefield objectives, spawn points or Keeps. It is a win for all concerned.

Do it Trion! Please!

Well, that’s it for the first installment of the Rift Forum Report. If you have any favorite threads on the Rift forums that you think should be featured in next week’s installment, let me know! Thanks for reading!

Loving the RFR!! Hope you keep it up along with everything else on this site. ohh btw are you still going to write on your other Corpse Run blog? I began following your blogs then, and really enjoyed it. I noticed since rift has grabbed your attention it has been all you have written about (Can’t blame ya there btw) Just would like to know if I should keep checking that blog or delete it from my bookmarks?